e warm springs are among the most interesting curiosities of our
country: they are in great numbers. One of them, the central one, emits
a vast quantity of water; the ordinary temperature is that of boiling
water. When the season is dry, and the volume of water somewhat
diminished, the temperature of the water increases.

"The waters are remarkably limpid and pure, and are used by the people
who resort there for health, for culinary purposes. They have been
analyzed, and exhibit no mineral properties beyond common spring water.
Their efficacy, then, for they are undoubtedly efficacious to many
invalids that resort there, results from the shades of the adjacent
mountains, and from the cool and oxygenated mountain breeze; the
convenience of warm and tepid bathing; the novelty of fresh and mountain
scenery, and the necessity of temperance, imposed by the poverty of the
country and the difficulty of procuring supplies. The cases in which the
waters are supposed to be efficacious, are those of rheumatic affection,
general debility, dyspepsia, and cutaneous complaints. At a few yards
from the hot springs is one strongly sulphuric and remarkable for its
coldness. In the wild and mountain scenery of this lonely region, there
is much of grandeur and novelty to fix the curiosity of the lover
of nature."

The next morning I bade farewell to Finn and Boone, and set off on my
journey. I could not help feeling a strange sensation of loneliness, as
I passed hill after hill, and wood after wood. It seemed to me as if
something was wrong; I talked to myself, and often looked behind to see
if any one was coming my way. This feeling, however, did not last long,
and I soon learned that, west of the Mississippi, a man with a purse and
a good horse must never travel in the company of strangers, without he
is desirous to lose them and his life to boot.

I rode without stopping the forty-five miles of dreary road which leads
from the hot springs to Little Rock, and I arrived in that capital
early at noon.

Foreigners are constantly visiting every part of the United States, and
yet very few, if any, have ever visited the Arkansas. They seem all to
be frightened away by the numerous stories of Arkansas murders, with
which a tourist is always certain to be entertained on board one of the
Mississippi steam-boats. Undoubtedly these reports of murders and
atrocities have been, as all things else are in the United States, much
exaggerated, but no